Debut Danseuse in AyyappanThiyyattu

At her native village near Thrissur on the eve of this Onam, T.R. Aryadevi noticed her father moulding the elongated Thrikkakarayappan cubes out of wet clay from the backyard of their house. The way T.N. Raman Nambiar shaped up the festival idols appeared similar to his structuring of her postures of the family’s performance tradition allied to temples.

Aryadevi had, in the middle of this monsoon, made a historic entry into AyyappanThiyyattu. Her gestures-oriented Koothu, which is central to the pre-classical art, turned out to be momentous: she became the first woman to perform the item in its centuries-old history. The event coincided with her mentor Raman Nambiar’s 70th birthday celebrated in end-July the heritage town of Tripunithura, south of Kochi, where the household lives.

RLV Aryadevi, as she is known in this decade, is a Kathakali artiste who did her masters in the dance-theatre from the institution which is a couple of furlongs away from her house. That way, she is familiar with the mudras and the overall body language that Thiyyattu employs in a less refined fashion. “In Kathakali, we are used to stylized facial emotingin a big way. Thiyyattu’s koothu, as a ritualistic form, doesn’t encourage it much. Also, the gestures are quainter. In short, I had to unlearn a bit,” says Aryadevi, a 39-year-old mother of two schoolgirls, who are also into the arts.

Aryadevi and her younger brother, T.R. Vasudevan, initially graduated with top rank from RLV College in vesham (Kathakali) and its music respectively. Unlike her sibling (who branched out to filmmaking), the sister chose to further explore the same field and completed her MA (2022-24), boosting her stage appearances as a Kathakali artiste.

Decisive turn

As someone with increasing invitations for female roles besides the sprightly Krishna in Kathakali, Aryadevi enjoyed support from not just her father, but mother T.N. Rathnakumari. Yet the parents, both from a community that conventionally mandated with performing AyyappanThiyyattu at shrines and mansions across Malabar and central Kerala, didn’t find the idea of a female performing Koothu, which is an hour-long non-verbal portrayal of the mythological ShankaraMohanam story.

“From childhood, Ayyappa has been my favourite idol. Also, my father has had half-a-dozen boys of the new generation learning Thiyyattu under him at our home in Tripunithura,” recalls Aryadevi. “My earliest memory with any art is with Thiyyattu. As a girl, I wasn’t taught it, but then I knew much of the common items. They include sketching and colouring the lord’s figure on the floor, singing the prayers rhythmically and even the steps and utterances of the oracle, who eventually erases the ‘kalam’ laid in a rectangle under a temporary roof festooned with tender coconut-leaves.”

Aryadevi and Vasudevan had, as kids, learned drawing and painting. Expanding her skills further to the mural genre, Aryadevi went on to come up with bright figures of Hindu gods and goddesses — some of them commissioned works. This helped her help her father at Thiyyattu kalam, where she could even improvise upon some of the time-tested decorative patterns around Ayyappa’s headgear and ornaments. Into this decade, she occasionally assists on Kalamezhuthu of Ayyappa in five natural colours, sometimes along with Niranjana Varma, another female disciple of Raman Nambiar.

As the 2024 Thiyyattu season typically began from the holy Mandalam time, Raman Nambiar began formally training his daughter in Koothu. With its focal theme of Ayyappa born to Mohini (Vishnu in disguise) and Shiva (who wanted to see the alluring figure he missed at the Palazhimathanam (Churning of the ocean of milk), the Koothu vesham’s appearance symbolises the divine Nandikeswara bull-vehicle. “I stuck to the manly costume; we have anyway no facial make-up. However, some parts of the dress bore novelties,” says Aryadevi, acknowledging them to Koodiyattam theatre couple Bhadra P.K.M. and Ammannur Rajaneesh Chakyar. “There was criticism from certain relatives, but society largely welcomed the female entry (on July 27, 2025).”

Raman Nambiar, who retired in a managerial position from Bharat Petroleum at Ambalamugal near Tripunithura, says he would want Aryadevi to also learn the eleven other stories in the run-up to the final ShankaraMohanam in Thiyyattu. “In her, I also see the prospect of a teacher for the coming decades,” he adds.